The dealer fixed the broken fog light in the pic in my previous post. I noticed it was in the only stock pic I have. Any way...

I knew as soon as I brought the pickup home that I needed to lift it to get into a lot of the places I used to take the Jeep. I am not an off road enthusiast, but I love to hunt and fish here in Colorado. A lot of the places I get into are off Jeep trails or require some pretty rough off road access.I will say, that in the months I had to wait to get my lift kit. I was impressed with the capability of a stock Frontier. I took it some places I was nervous it couldn't handle, but with a careful approach it can do pretty well off road with stock suspension.

I tried to contact Nisstec because they are a CO company and I like to support local business when I can. I don't want to bash them and I am sure they are great for some, but they never replied to any of my voicemails. I sent an email after waiting over a week for a call back, and got a reply on how covid and phone issues were giving them a hard time, so I replied with my questions via email. I never heard back from them, and won't purchase anything from them because of my initial impressions. I reached out to All Dogs Offroad after that. They were fantastic about responding to questions on the phone or email, and I am happy that I did business with them. After talking to them on the phone I decided to go with the titan swap and Radflo coilovers, and rear shocks. I also purchased their BROverland medium duty leaf pack. I am very happy with the ride quality of their leaf pack, and would recommend it to anyone in the market for one. I have done quite a few AAL with lift kits, and didn't want to go that route for this lift. I did have to wait a long time to get the lift from ADO, but it was worth it. I placed my order March 5th and got the last leaf spring delivered sometime around September 15th.

 

When the final piece of the ADO lift kit arrived I got to work installing it. I work on cars a lot, and my dad taught me a lot growing up, but I still think installing a titan swap is not too difficult. Anyone with a few basic tools can do it. The only part that really kicked me in the *** was getting the SPC upper control arms to fit. I tried grinding the back of the arms to get it to fit, after seeing that tip on this forum. It helped, but wasn't close to giving me enough clearance to install the UCA. I had to grind the mounting points on the truck. It is tough to get in there to grind it out. There isn't a lot of room, and there are brake lines and hoses behind where you need to grind, so it takes some time. I was able to make some cuts with a dremel cut off in some places. Others were too tight to even get the dremel to fit. Luckily I have quite a few pneumatic tools from other restoration projects and between my straight and angled 2 inch pneumatic die grinders I was eventually able to get my SPC upper control arms to fit. I also needed to get an inner tie rod tool rented from the local auto parts store. I have a ball joint/tie rod separator I bought for my Datsun 320, but it was too small for the frontier outer tie rod and ball joints, so I had to rent that too.
Not so obvious tools to line up before starting.
1. some sort of grinding tool small enough to fit between the UCA mounting locations.
2. Inner tie rod tool.
3. Ball joint/tie rod separator or pickle fork. (this one might fall under the obvious category, but I still screwed it up)

After getting the UCA to fit the rest of the installation was a breeze. I found that installing the lower control arm first allowed me to install the longer axle shafts the easiest. After the new Titan lower control arm is installed, un clip the ABS sensor line, and disconnect the stock brake line. Disconnect the upper control arm ball joint from the hub spindle, and you can tilt it out enough to install the longer axle before installing the upper control arm.

 

After I had the titan swap installed I needed some new tires. Here are a few pictures of the titan swap with the stock wheels and tires

 

I wanted to try the Falken Wildpeak because of all the good things I had heard about them. I also didn't want to run MT tires right now. I had been running them on the old lifted Jeep, and maybe I got spoiled with the ride quality of a stock Frontier with under 10k miles. I just wanted a smooth riding tire that could go off road when I need to. I also like the claimed tread life of the Falkens. I had a hard time finding them in stock in the 285/75/16, and the 17 inch tires were cheaper, so I decided that was a good enough excuse to buy new wheels. I looked at a lot of the local tire shop inventory, but wheel selection for 6 on 4.5 is pretty limited. I decided to order from Custom Offsets Simplifying Buying Aftermarket Wheels & Tires | Custom Offsets. They had a pretty good selection of wheels to choose from. I had to eliminate a few wheels I wanted due to back order status, but eventually found the Black Rhino chamber wheels. In hind sight I am glad that the others were back ordered, because I was going to go with a bronze wheel. I like the way the black looks now that it is installed.

I had to have patience again for the 3 week wait for wheels and tires to arrive, but everything is on the truck now and ready to go. I had to do quite a bit of trimming to get them to not rub. The offset difference from stock wheels, combined with the titan swap creates some clearance issues at full turn. I tried to get an alignment done today, but the shop would not do it with the square washer locking cam bolts from ADO. I tried to explain that it should be set for max caster as is and that camber and toe should be able to be adjusted with the SPC Upper control arms and tie rod adjustments, but they were being dicks about it, so I will take it somewhere else. It is pretty close as is, and rides really well, so I am sure some other alignment shop can figure it out. Once final alignment is done I will do the last bit of trimming and get the fender liners back in.

17 inch Black Rhino Chamber wheels. 285/70/17 Falken Wildpeak AT3W all terrain tires

 

I also added 2" wheel spacers in the back to even out the track width. I didn't like the way it looked with the front poking out so much more than the back. I placed an order with Titan wheel accessories. It is the only thing I didn't have to wait for. They delivered it right away. I am waiting on extended wheel lugs, because I didn't like the thread engagement on the wheel spacers. I am not driving it much without the alignment done, so it should be ok for short trips with the stock stud length and blue loctite as is. That's where I am now. I have my eye on a dezert runner offroad front bumper, but am tired of spending money right now, so that will have to wait. I hope my intro post offered some help to someone. I will post some pics of the stock suspension parts here when I get around to it, and will list them in the classifieds when I can. Have a good weekend.

 

Did you get any measurements @ the wheel wells before & after? I’m curious how much lift is actually netted by going the Titan-swap route. Love the Softopper. I have one on my ‘18.

 

I did take measurements. I left the ride height of the radflo's how they shipped them because it looked great right out of the box, and seemed level with the lift the leaf springs and shackles. I had just over 4.5" of lift. I forgot to measure the rear after installing the leaf pack, but it looks to be about the same. I would take a measurement of the back to verify that for you but don't have the stock wheels on any more.

The softopper is awesome! I really like it too, especially because I don't always want it on, and it is so easy to remove. I was lucky enough to find it on Craigslist this summer. I wanted one from Softopper, but like everything else seems to be right now, they were backordered.

 

Your truck looks amazing! Thanks for sharing your experience as well!

I’m not at all local, but I would take your old suspension parts. I have 60k miles on my truck, but I live in the north east where salty winters destroy everything.

 

Your truck looks amazing! Thanks for sharing your experience as well!

I’m not at all local, but I would take your old suspension parts. I have 60k miles on my truck, but I live in the north east where salty winters destroy everything.

Sorry, the parts I took off my new truck are going on the old one. It’s sitting at about 68,000 miles, so it’s due for a little love.

 

Welcome to the club! Need one of these now

 

Looking good!